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Local help on the payday loan front

In Wednesday’s column, I wrote about developing a better product to meet the local demand for payday loans.
Those short-term, high-interest loans are widely used in Iowa, but they can send cash strapped families into a financial tailspin.
In Des Moines, Citizens for Community Improvement and Bankers Trust partnered this spring to offer small dollar loans to low- and mid-income [...]

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5/23 column: Veterans’ dedication endures

BROOKLYN, Iowa — Every May, Brooklyn’s Civil War veterans would gather at the school.
They’d march through the neighborhoods to Brooklyn Memorial Cemetery in order to honor their dead companions.
“It’s always been emotional to me,” Stanley Walford, 83, told me when I met him and other Brooklyn veterans of other wars last week.
“After all those years, [...]

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Talkback: Coordinating human services

It seems I could have done a better job connecting the dots in my Saturday column about connecting human services in Cedar Rapids.
B.J. Smith writes:
Jennifer, I’m a little confused. What is the connection between the proposed human services campus, the ANCHOR Center and Wellington Heights, and what is it that’s a no-brainer? Can you explain a [...]

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Bike to work

It’s Bike to Work Week, so this morning I pulled my old blue bike off the hooks in the garage, dusted her off and filled the tires.
Then I slung my briefcase across my back, strapped on my trusty Bell helmet and coasted down the drive.
I’membarrassed to say that I usually take my car to work, even [...]

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Seizing the future of news

In a couple weeks, legions of new journalism school graduates will cross the stage, shake a few hands, grab their diploma and — do what exactly?
It’s a question that’s making a lot of students anxious around the country and at the University of Iowa, where I sometimes teach a reporting class.
So perennial activist, optimist and J-School Professor Judy Polumbaum [...]

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Warehousing the mentally ill

If you didn’t watch last night’s Frontline, you should.
The Released takes a hard look at the ways we’re failing people with chronic mental illness — warehousing them in prisons and jails because there are no other options.
According to the program, about 1 million people in prison are there because of a mental illness. The real [...]

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More free stuff

Dick Stater, Iowa Waste Exchange Resource Specialist in Cedar Rapids, e-mailed me about today’s column to ask I bring your attention to another great resource swap opportunity.
The Iowa Waste Exchange has a database of more than 9,000 businesses that have resources available or who can use them. He said:
The Iowa Waste Exchange is a free, confidential and non-regulatory [...]

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We *heart* Susan Boyle

What is it about Susan Boyle, the unglamorous, unemployed, 47-year-old woman who drew snickers this week when she stepped on the stage of the British TV show Britain’s Got Talent?
Our cynical hearts went out to her – how many times have we seen earnest but untalented people chewed up by a reality show? But then she started to [...]

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Rebellious teens wanted

File this one under train wreck: In my inbox today, from the Iowa Film Office, is this casting call for rebellious teens.
Seems there’s a new Wife Swap-style reality show in the works, and producers are looking for “teens with unique interests; technically savvy teens; hippies; urbanites; slobs; surfers; affluent teens; liberals; defiant teens; and teens who have [...]

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